Senegal coach Pape Thiaw cannot be accused of lacking ambition for the upcoming World Cup in North America.

“If, even for a second, I doubted that I could win the World Cup with Senegal, then I would step aside,” he said after a match in March.

The statement was remarkable on two counts.

First, that an African team is openly declaring it can win the World Cup. Second, that it has not been ridiculed for saying so – which speaks volumes about the respect Senegal’s national team has earned from the footballing world.

“Those were not just empty words. The players and the coach believe they can win the World Cup,” Babacar Diarra, a French-Senegalese freelance journalist, told Al Jazeera.

“Although the first match [against France] will tell us a lot about how good this team truly is.”

On the African continent, Senegal need not convince anyone of their quality. They are by far Africa’s most consistent national team, and a simple statistic backs that up: over the last decade, Senegal have either won every Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) they participated in or lost to the eventual champions.

The only recent disappointments come in the World Cup, yet there are mitigating circumstances.

In 2018, the West Africans were the first side in competition history to be eliminated by tie-breaking fair-play rules after accumulating too many bookings in the group stages. At Qatar 2022, Senegal – playing without injured star player Sadio Mane – crashed out to England in the last 16.

“For this golden generation of players – Sadio Mane, Kalidou Koulibaly, Idrissa Gana Gueye and Edouard Mendy – this is the opportune moment. It’s now or never,” Diarra said.

The key to Senegal’s success comes from smart diaspora recruitment, as well as local academies that – while fertile – have also been overshadowed by controversy.

For a country of just 20 million people, Senegal produces talented young footballers at a scale unparalleled on the continent. Much larger nations such as Nigeria (estimated 242 million population), Ethiopia (138 million), Egypt (120 million) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (117 million) do not come close.

Over the last couple of decades, several state-of-the-art academies have opened in Senegal, equipped with pristine training pitches, dormitories, schools and physical therapy facilities. Each year, they send several players into the top five European leagues.

Of the 28 players Senegal selected for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations, 13 came from Senegalese academies such as Generation Foot, Diambars, Dakar Sacre Coeur or Casa Sports. Yet as good as these academies have been for the national team, others see exploitation in their establishment.

Diambars had a partnership with Olympique de Marseille, as did Dakar Sacre Coeur with Olympique Lyonnais (both have now ended) – but the most striking relationship is the longstanding one between Generation Foot and FC Metz. It is an arrangement spanning 23 years, in which Metz have fronted more than 10 million euros ($11.6m) for the construction and operation of the Generation Foot academy, and in return for holding the right of first refusal on its best talent.

Players such as Mane, along with former Arsenal striker Emmanuel Adebayor, Crystal Palace winger Ismaila Sarr, and Tottenham midfielder Pape Matar Sarr, among many others, came through Metz via the Generation Foot academy.

Yet a closer look at the figures surrounding these transactional relationships has stirred resentment. The 13 AFCON players from academy backgrounds generated just 100,000 euros ($116,000) in transfer fees across 13 moves for their respective academies.

The European clubs that initially acquired them sold them on to convert those investments into a combined 81.2 million euros ($94m). Across their careers, those same players have generated a total of 411 million euros ($477m) in transfer fees. The gulf in revenue is increasingly perceived as gross economic injustice.

“On one hand, youngsters benefit from good education and access to top infrastructure,” explains Mamadou Ndiaye, a loyal supporter of the national team who has followed them at three AFCON tournaments.

“Yet we should not forget that the investors funding the academies are businessmen – it is not the federation or the government. They know there’s talent here, they put their money in, capture the ‘raw material’, refine it and sell it to Europe,” he told Al Jazeera.

Beyond these economic imbalances, some academies have also struggled to claim the solidarity compensation they are legally owed – a FIFA mechanism entitling clubs to a share of future transfer fees for any player they trained between the ages of 12 and 23 – due to administrative failures at the federation level.

When Nicolas Jackson moved from Villarreal to Chelsea in the summer of 2023 for 37 million euros ($43m), he was expected to bring in 185,000 euros ($215,000) for his former club and academy, Casa Sports.

“An error in the player’s registration at the federation level nearly deprived Casa Sports of revenues that were rightfully owed to the club,” Cherif Sadio, who was director of the Casa Sports academy at the time, told Al Jazeera English.

“Casa Sports eventually managed to correct the administrative issue in order to recover what it was legally entitled to. These situations were fortunately resolved afterwards, but they should never happen in the first place.”

Sadio now works as director of development, strategy and partnerships at Diambars FC, and maintains that the gap between the elite of Senegalese men’s football and the rest of the domestic game remains deeply troubling.

“It is the most striking paradox of Senegalese football, and it deserves to be stated clearly,” he said.

“We produce world-class players, we develop talents who generate hundreds of millions of euros in transfer fees, we win continental titles – and at the same time our local clubs struggle to survive, our stadiums are dilapidated, our leagues lack visibility, and our administrators struggle to master the legal and financial mechanisms of modern football.”

Targeting the diaspora

In addition to producing talent through its academies, Senegal can recruit from deep talent pools in the Western European diaspora.

In recent months, the federation has persuaded French-born 18-year-old Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) forward Ibrahim Mbaye and 20-year-old Chelsea defender Mamadou Sarr to represent the Teranga Lions, despite both having featured for France at the U20 level.

Just a few years ago, Senegal were stung when Aston Villa midfielder Boubakar Kamara turned down the chance to play at the 2022 World Cup with them, opting instead to compete for a place in the French side. Convincing players of the calibre of Mbaye and Sarr to commit to Senegal is a sign that the federation’s approach to diaspora recruitment has matured considerably.

“The federation’s policy rests on three distinct pillars,” explains Sadio. “Firstly, they target diaspora players between the ages of 16 and 19, before they become tied to another country.

“The second point has to do with identity. Although they’re born in countries like France or England, these players often grow up in Senegalese households where culture, language and values are passed down, and the federation uses that to its advantage.

“Third, Senegal’s recent success has strengthened the appeal of the project, aligning ambition with identity so that choosing Senegal is both a personal and a sporting advantage.”

The result is that 36-year-old Dakar-born Idrissa Gana Gueye can play alongside 18-year-old Trappes-born Ibrahim Mbaye in a squad that is a dynamic blend of homegrown and diaspora talent, of the experienced and the emerging.

It is that combination that gives coach Pape Thiaw every right to be as confident as he is.